As the fresh produce industry continues to unpack the cyclospora outbreak from this summer, De Ann Davis, senior vice president of science for Western Growers, calls it an “eye-opening experience.”
Davis, who recently penned an article on the vital role communication plays in fresh produce outbreaks, joined “The Packer Podcast” to discuss how the industry moves forward.
While she says it’s difficult for the industry to communicate during outbreaks because of the unknowns, “in this particular instance, consumer confidence was lost so quickly and so fast, and the FDA was not able to keep up.” This highlights the critical need for proactive communication to help debunk misinformation and share facts available to “help consumers understand what is safe and what is not safe.”
As the industry takes a closer look at how this outbreak unfolded, it needs to continue to communicate what it does well when it comes to food safety, Davis says.
“One of the things we definitely need to invest in is communication and what we do as an industry that does keep our products safe,” she says.
If all the consumer hears is when something goes wrong, that’s not proactive, Davis adds.
“We deliver billions of servings almost every single day very well and very safe,” she says. “We have a lot of checks and balances that go into being able to do that, and we need to be able to communicate that better.”
When something does go wrong, it’s critical for the produce industry to communicate the steps taken to correct and fix those issues — and highlight the continual improvement moving forward.
Another important step is working more closely with public health officials to share the actions and steps taken so that [the] public health community understands them better.
“Therefore, they can be reinforced to the consumer when the consumer has questions and can make the better food safety decisions at the shelf when they’re making purchasing decisions,” Davis says.
In this particular outbreak, Davis says the messaging about the cyclospora risk with imported produce versus domestic produce was completely lost on the consumer.
“There are lots of resources available that would support [that] — both public health as well as scientific resources,” she says.
Also, the fresh produce industry didn’t communicate successfully the difference between hazard and risk. While cyclospora is a potential hazard, the risk of exposure is different depending on the location of the produce.
“Take California, for example; we had no cases associated with this particular outbreak,” she says. “There was no concern with California-grown produce, but yet that message was not getting at all out into the media nor into social media, which was really unfortunate and very difficult to get across.”
Davis says this is why communication in plain language is necessary to ensure the appropriate messages reach consumers clearly and concisely.
Another key point to highlight proactively is the different food safety programs of retail partners as well as country of origin labeling on fresh produce. During this cyclospora outbreak, supply chain partners could have helped consumers understand where to find out the origin of a bagged salad or greens.
“We can work together to communicate to the consumer what is fresh, what [are] the programs behind the selection of the fresh produce that’s being presented, whether it’s in a restaurant or whether it’s in a sandwich shop or whether it’s the onion that you’re picking up when you’re going to the grocery store — how that retailer made those decisions to get it there,” she says.
Davis says transparent communication to highlight all the strong food safety programs already in place is key to helping rebuild trust with consumers.
“I think that’s always the part that we’ve missed,” she says. “We’ve sort of had this unfortunate attitude that the consumer should just trust, and that’s not true.”
Ultimately, this outbreak offered a valuable lesson in the importance of proactive communication with clear facts shared with the consumer.
“I think the days are gone where we sit back and rely on our public health authorities to be able to reach the consumer and sort this information out for them,” Davis says.
